


Memories

by pastelpeachpunk



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Christmas, Friendship, Sad but Hopefully Funny, au where jay and tim traveled in late fall and winter instead of spring and summer, death mention, man tags are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5620981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelpeachpunk/pseuds/pastelpeachpunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay and Tim don't really talk about the past, but when Christmas comes around, Jay finds that he suddenly has an intense need to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

Jay and Tim had been traveling for a while.

When they had first left, the leaves had only just begun falling-- an early November dyed a range of deep green fading into gold. By late November, fall was in full swing, and the entire landscape was a sea of orange and maroon, lit up and burning in the fading rays of the setting sun. Jay had stared at it through the windows of an Applebee’s on the evening of Thanksgiving. 

He had listened as Tim read over the menu, pointing out how ridiculous many of the options sounded-- "There's double crunch wings, there's double crunch shrimp, there's regular wings and there's regular shrimp. What's a 'double crunch,' anyways? What exactly constitutes a double crunch anything?"

"Pretty sure that means they fry it twice."

"Why, because the second time is going to make it any less terrible?"

"If you hate Applebee’s so much, why did we stop here?" Jay had asked, more out of genuine curiosity than any sort of passive aggressive jab. 

Tim cracked a wry smile. "Me and Brian always used to have Applebee’s. It was like, 'yeah, the food sucks, but there's never a wait and there's always something to make a joke about.'" 

And so Jay had joined in on insulting Tryhard: The Restaurant and Tim started to recount the story of how freshman year, when Brian and Tim had shared a dorm room, they nearly got kicked out of Applebee’s because... 

And then Tim stopped, finding suddenly that he could not actually remember. "I don't really know," he had said, "but it was funny." 

Jay had grinned, bringing up the time that his dog had jumped up on the table just before everyone sat down for the Thanksgiving meal and ate half the turkey, and his mom had…

And then Jay, stopped, too, because he knew that his mom had shouted the dog's name in a way he had mimicked for weeks, but he couldn't quite grasp the memory of what his dog's name had been.

So they stopped talking about the past.

••••••••••••••

By the time December was almost through, the entire south was soaked with what meteorologists described as unusual amounts of precipitation. This certainly did not go unnoticed by Tim and Jay, who, with hoods up against the rain, hurried through the parking lot of a grocery store one Wednesday afternoon. 

They had been out of Alabama for a few weeks now, struggling to locate an out-of-state home Alex's grandparents had lived in whom he often visited on the holidays. It was a far reach, but after spending so much time in Alabama towns, knowing where Alex was laying low, Tim and Jay could easily convince themselves that the excursion was necessary. 

"It's really coming down," Tim commented, flipping his hood back and pulling a shopping cart towards him. 

"Yeah. Wish I had rain boots or something," Jay replied, wiping his feet on the entryway's rug, knowing that it would do little to fix the squelching noise his feet were making in his socks. Disgusting.

It reminded him of something.

They made their way down the aisles, stocking up on the essentials. Protein bars and other foods. Batteries for the flashlights. Toothpaste and deodorant. 

The grocery store was plastered in Christmas commercialism and as Jay walked past the decor, he was struck by something. Jay, stunned, stared at each cartoony reindeer and elf in turn. / _ They/ _ reminded him of something, too.

It was Tim's voice which jarred him out of his trance, a firm " _ Jay, _ " to get his attention. 

"What? Sorry," Jay said automatically, breaking the unblinking eye contact he had maintained with a cardboard cutout of Santa Claus for the past thirty seconds.

"What are you doing?" Tim asked.

"Nothing," Jay said, then corrected himself. "Just thinking."

"Alright, well, I asked if we need more tapes."

Jay considered the number of tapes they had in the trunk. Better safe than sorry. "We could always use a few extra," he said, picking up the package of tapes and dropping them in the basket.

Jay let his mind wander again, marveling at his newfound discovery: memories from his childhood, almost entirely intact. 

When he was in middle school, he walked to his friend's house in the rain the day after Christmas to show off his new RC Helicopter. 

His grandmother used to print out clip art of elves and reindeer and decorate the kitchen with them, connecting them with paper chains and cut-out snowflakes. 

His mom had a portrait of Santa Claus she would hang over the mantle every year, magnificent and out of place amongst the rest of his family's bright and campy Christmas decorations. 

Each memory fueled his growing sense of excitement.

_ Christmas. _

"Tim," Jay said suddenly and with great urgency, stopping in place. "Tim, they sell trees here, right? The little Christmas trees?"

Tim, having recovered with impressive speed at being forced to stop dead lest he run Jay over with the shopping basket, looked at him curiously. "Yeah, probably. Why?"

Jay turned around. "We should  _ get  _ one. Come on, we can probably find—"

"That's a waste of money," Tim interrupted, steering the basket around Jay, "which is already a precious enough commodity, if you haven't noticed." He glanced over his shoulder at Jay to make sure he had started walking again. "Why do you even need one? There's no ornaments or presents or anything. Besides, where would we keep a Christmas tree? On the dashboard of the car?"

"A  _ little _ Christmas tree," Jay corrected, hastening his pace to fall into step beside Tim. "And it's  _ not _ a waste of money, we can just put it in the hotel room to look at!"

Tim raised his eyebrows in a 'you're not going to win this one' look that Jay knew all too well. 

"They're like ten dollars! We can afford a ten dollar tree!"

Tim shook his head. "Sorry, buddy, but I'm not buying you something you're going to use once."

"I won't use it once, I will use it  _ multiple times _ !"

Tim caught Jay by the shoulder, stopping the basket. "Look, when all this blows over and we aren't living hotel room to hotel room, I will personally go out, buy you a ten dollar little Christmas tree, wrap it in a bow, and leave it on your porch. Until then, can we check out now?"

With a frustrated sigh, Jay conceded, and the pair entered the checkout line. Tim picked up a small stocking, the kind one might put a festive gift card in, and held it up so Jay could see. "Here," he said, laughing, "you can hang this on your fireplace."

Jay insisted the joke wasn't funny, but the smile on his face proved otherwise. Tim was right about one thing; Jay didn't  _ really  _ need one. He could have Christmas just fine without it.

••••••••••••••

It was with great vigor that Jay's Christmas spirit overtook him, and with it brought an unprecedented tidal wave of memories. He sat in the passenger seat of Tim's car as they drove back to the hotel, watching the side of the road out of the window as he turned them over in his mind. The Operator's influence had stolen so many moments of his past from him, and he, like a starved man, savored each minute detail of clarity. 

Jay's Christmas stocking had been green with red trim. His dad had once tricked him into eating a wasabi-flavored candy cane. The Christmas-themed dishes his mom set out every year had Christmas wreaths and little elves on the edges, and his favorite was the plate that had a chip right over the face of one of Santa's little helpers. 

Things he would have considered unimportant at best before were of ineffable importance now. Jay almost wanted to write each tidbit down, just to have a list. 

He once got a free candy cane from his first grade teacher. He always slam-dunked the donation money his mom gave him into the charity bucket. He could think of every single word to his grandmother's favorite Christmas song.

"Stop that," Tim groaned.

"Stop what?" Jay replied without deliberation or remorse for whatever he was doing.

"You're humming," came the immediate response. "You're humming Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

"So?" Jay asked, glancing at Tim with a grin. "I mean, he is."

"Jay," Tim said slowly. 

"Tim," Jay replied.

"Jay. I will not condone you humming songs about elderly, obese stalkers who bring a self-righteous hammer of justice down upon those he deems 'bad.'"

" _ What? _ "

"Listen to the lyrics, it's all there, I'm not making this up!"

"You've  _ got _ to be kidding—"

"No, okay, look." Normally Jay was the one known for gesticulating wildly, but Tim was giving him a run for his money, accentuating almost every phrase with another gesture of the arm. It did not make for safe driving.

"Literally the first line is 'You better watch out'. That is a  _ threat.  _ And come on, 'he sees you when you're sleeping'—"

"Stop—"

"—'he knows when you're awake—"

"—I know the words to the  _ song _ , Tim, oh my—"

"—and Santa Claus is Coming to Town isn't the only one! Have you ever even  _ listened _ to Frosty the Snowman?"

Jay threw his hands up in a strange mix of vexation and unhappy amusement. "What are you  _ talking _ about?"

"A pile of snow that a demonic  _ hat _ possesses, running around town, leading children to their deaths--"

"What do you mean  _ deaths? _ "

Tim waved a hand in faked exasperation. "He led them down the streets of town, right to the traffic cop, and he only paused a moment when he heard him holler 'Stop!' For Frosty the snowman had to hurry on his way  _ to escape the penalty of the law.  _ He led those kids right into the oncoming lane of traffic. And the thumpity-thump-thump, thumpity-thump-thump—"

"Don't you  _ dare _ —"

"— _ that's the cars driving over the bodies _ ."

"Tim!" Jay cried, struggling not to laugh. "You're  _ ruining _ Christmas!"

••••••••••••••

A quick stop at the hotel to check out later, and Jay and Tim were back on the highway. Oftentimes it was Tim who drove in front, but after some convincing, Jay had won the argument to lead the way.

The conversation had mainly consisted of this:

"No offense, but you would probably get us lost," from Tim, puffing a cigarette as he leaned against the hood of his car.

"I'm a  _ perfectly good _ navigator. Besides, I actually follow the speed limit, and I'm sick of almost losing you in traffic all the time," from Jay, sitting sideways in his driver's seat, feet out on the pavement.

"Jay, you drive like a grandma."

"Shut up, you  _ are _ a grandma. I wanna lead."

Rinse and repeat.

Tim had eventually given in, and it was in this way that Jay and Tim found themselves pulling onto the side of the road several hours later, a place so isolated they hadn't seen city lights nor streetlamps for what seemed like eons.

Tim had been waiting for Jay to pull over—it had been obvious for quite a while that they were lost, but Jay just kept pressing on into the darkness, like he expected their intended destination to just jump out at them.

At first it was just a realization of,  _ Oh, great, he really  _ did _ get us lost. _

As the minutes turned into hours and Jay still tried to pretend everything was fine, Tim grew more and more frustrated, and by the time Jay finally put on his hazard lights and pulled over, Tim was just about ready to wring his scrawny neck.

"Took you long enough," Tim said testily, slamming his car door. 

Jay didn't answer but stayed where he was, leaning against his car door with his hands deep in his coat pockets. 

"Why didn't you just pull over when you realized you had no idea where you were going?" 

Jay pressed his lips together. "Just wasn't paying attention. I got distracted, I guess."

"You  _ guess?  _ Jay, we're in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea where we are,  _ you _ certainly have no idea where we are."

Jay stared at the pavement. No response.

Tim shook his head, exhaling slowly. Now wasn't the time for shouting. He turned back around to his car, talking over his shoulder. "Whatever. It's fine. Come on, I'll drive in front, we're bound to hit a town eventually."

"I'm almost out of gas," Jay mumbled, almost inaudible.

Tim let out another, even more controlled exhale. 

"I've got the gas can in the trunk. Come on."

They filled up Jay's tank. 

Jay said he was sorry. 

Tim said it was fine with a little more conviction.

They hit the road again.

••••••••••••••

In Jay's defense, he  _ had _ known where he was going. Things only went sour when he took a wrong turn. His mind had been wandering— _ Jay's dog had had a red and green Christmas collar specifically for the holidays _ —and when he noticed his mistake, he tried to turn around to fix the problem. This led to its' own set of complications, which spawned only more and more wrong turns and missed exits, and before he knew it, Jay had no idea where he had come from or where he was going. 

So he just kept driving. 

It wasn't until his gas light came on that, with a cold mix of self-loathing and embarrassment, Jay had finally put on his hazard lights and—

Where was Tim going?

Jay, confused, followed Tim as he pulled onto a gravel road almost overgrown with brush. Craning his neck, Jay could make out the shape of what appeared to be a building illuminated in the dim moonlight.

Oh, no. This  _ had _ to be a joke.

Yet Tim parked his car outside of the dilapidated two-story farmhouse and was already digging through his trunk for the flashlights when Jay climbed out of his own vehicle, pulling his backpack over his shoulder.

"Why did we stop?" Jay asked, despite being fully aware of the answer.

"I don't know about you, but I don't plan on sleeping in my car tonight," Tim replied, scooting his bag out of the way and feeling blindly for the flashlights.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope," came the reply, a tone which Jay couldn't discern between poorly forced cheerfulness or highbrow sarcasm. Given Tim's track record, it was likely the latter.

"There's a million different reasons why this is a terrible idea and kids talk about them all the time at sleepovers," Jay mumbled as he took his light.

"What?"

"Scary stories."

"...What?" Tim repeated, hesitating with his hands on the car trunk.

"Well—you know, 'It was a dark and stormy night' and all that," Jay explained, feeling foolish. "Two people seek shelter in the old abandoned house, it's haunted and it... kills them and stuff?"

Tim didn't say anything, just raised his eyebrows at Jay with a mixed look of confusion and mild concern as he closed the car trunk. "You, uh," he began slowly, choosing his words carefully. "You alright there, buddy?"

Jay stared right back, struggling to understand the other's sudden change in attitude. What was Tim's deal, it wasn't like Jay was—

"Ugh, my God, you think I'm losing it," Jay groaned. "It was a  _ joke, _ I was  _ joking, _ I'm not suffering a paranoid breakdown or something."

"Oh," Tim said. "Sorry, it's just—all day, you've just been kind of—"

"Whatever, let's just break into this place, come on."

••••••••••••••

Entrance was gained to the farmhouse by a broken window 'round the back. The pair found themselves in what appeared to be a study, something Tim felt was out-of-place in a farmhouse. He ran his fingers along the spines of the tomes lining the bookshelves, leaving streaky patterns behind in the dust. The names of almanacs and poetry collections slid under his fingertips. 

Tim wiped his hand off on his jeans. Who was he to judge what kinds of rooms country folk kept in their homes. 

Jay went ahead, pulling the study door open and stepping into the hallway.

The house was in remarkably good shape. Whether by previous visitors or simply the elements, many knickknacks and a few pieces of furniture had been knocked over, and the entire place was covered in several layers of cobwebs and dust, but there were few holes in the place and no graffiti marred the walls. 

Jay pointed his flashlight up the hallway, catching the front door in its' beam. The front door opened into an entryway upon which branched off a staircase, a lounge, and the hallway Jay now stood in. There were two doors aside from the study in the hall, and the far end of the corridor opened into what appeared to be a kitchen.

Jay headed to the front of the house.

He swept his flashlight's beam across the staircase banister, around which someone had carefully wrapped garland. A wreath hung on the front door, complete with a once-garish red bow, now faded with dust.

"Nice decor," Jay commented, hardly able to suppress his smile.

Jay could practically hear Tim rolling his eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You wanna split up to check out the rest of the house? Should be pretty safe," Jay suggested, turning slowly as he continued taking in the place.

"Yeah, sounds good. Just, uh, be careful, alright?"

Jay hesitated, turning back to Tim with frown. "What do you mean?"

Tim made a pained expression. "You just have a tendency of being impulsive and hasty, and that's not exactly a comforting thought considering if this place has termites you'll go straight through the floorboards upstairs."

"That could happen to you, too!" The hastiness in Jay's reply did little to refute Tim's argument.

"No it won't," Tim answered flatly. "Everything always happens to you. You're lucky like that."

Jay scoffed and rolled his eyes, but Tim noticed Jay gave the stairs a brief but thoughtful glance before turning and heading into the lounge.

••••••••••••••

Tim took the upstairs. He moved through the floor, sweeping the flashlight over rooms only half-wallpapered and in various states of disrepair. He froze every time a floorboard creaked too loudly, as if it might be a sign that the hardwood underfoot might crumble beneath him. The last thing he needed was to do exactly what he warned Jay  _ not  _ to. The wind outside didn't help this fear, pushing against the walls and making the structure groan and re-settle.

Tim suddenly had a very terrible thought that someone could be in the house with them. After all, if one timed their movements carefully, couldn't they hide every sign of their presence within the creaking of the walls...? Wasn't a house in the middle of Actual Real Life Nowhere bound to attract a man in a hood? Or a furious film director with a gun?  Or a mysteriously long-limbed creature, fueling the anxiety of Tim's only friend in the world?

Tim wished he had Jay's knife. 

He entered the final room, more on edge than he had been in a while, and panned his flashlight slowly across it. 

It was more trashed than the rest, and moonlight filtered in through a hole in the roof.

Tim turned, waving his flashlight over the dresser beside the bed with no mattress. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. He carefully crept into the room, wincing every time something groaned under his feet. 

Tim paused when the beam of the flashlight hit the closet door. There certainly wasn't any other hiding place. If any person was upstairs with him, they would have to be there.

Steeling nerves he felt like he shouldn't need to exercise quite as much as he did, he pulled on the handle.

A pale face met him, spindly limbs, lean, proportions wrong—

Tim's breath hitched and he wrenched himself backwards, fingers slipping on the flashlight—his foot slid on a stray bit of what might have at once belonged to the ceiling—Tim fell back, hard.

The floor gave way beneath him.

••••••••••••••

Despite the somewhat bleak surroundings, Jay was enjoying himself. After doing a quick once-over of the downstairs, Jay had returned to the lounge. A Christmas tree was unceremoniously laid out on its' side, ornaments sprawled out across the floor, but Jay pulled the tree upright. He brushed some of the plaster and dust out of its' faux branches and retrieved some of the unsmashed ornaments from the floor and began to replace them, one by one.

Jay was in the process of hanging up a particularly endearing ornament depicting two mice sending letters to Santa when he heard Tim scream and the crash which followed.

The ornament fell from his hand.

"Tim?"

Silence.

Jay scrabbled to remove his backpack, unzipping it and ripping the video camera out, punching ON and RECORD as he sprinted out of the lounge and halfway up the stairs. "Tim?  _ Tim?! _ "

No, no. He wouldn't be upstairs, not after a sound like that.

" _ Tim! _ "

Jay pounded back down the stairs, throwing himself into the hallway. He would have thrown himself directly into the first door he came to as well, had he made it there without slipping on the rug, falling, and sliding a quarter of the ways down the hall.

Jay had landed on his side, and he was sure that he currently had half a dozen scratches along his upper arm and ribcage where the bits of debris littering the floor had dug into him.

Jay froze, hearing a very soft  _ hhhhhhhhhh _ . He got his bearings for a moment, then forced himself upright, watching the kitchen door. His lungs felt icy.

"Tim?" He called quietly.

The  _ hhhhhh _ sound happened again, a little louder.

Jay pushed himself to his feet and crept down the hall.

Heart pounding in his ears, Jay opened kitchen door to find Tim, wheezing as he rolled onto his side, struggling to regain the wind that had been knocked out of him. He was surrounded by the broken boards of the hardwood floor he had fallen through. Tim let out a final  _ hhiff _ of air, coughed slightly, inhaled deeply, then choked on the plaster and dust in the air and coughed again. 

The pair stared each other down as Tim slowly regained his breath.

Tim glanced up at the hole in the ceiling above him. No eldritch monsters descended. No masked or hooded capers stared down.

Nothing was attacking them, Tim was alive—and, for the most part, miraculously unharmed. 

"Are you okay?" Jay breathed.

Tim nodded.

Another moment of silence passed as Jay looked over the now debris-covered room. He shut off the camera.

"Oh my gosh," Jay said suddenly, "it  _ did  _ happen to you."

Tim locked eyes with Jay, as if simultaneously begging him not to say what he was about to say, but also daring him to say it.

"You fell through the floor," Jay said, suddenly having a lot of difficulty keeping from laughing. "And you told  _ me _ to be careful!"

"I  _ was _ being careful," Tim grumbled as he got to his feet, "I just got startled by something and lost my balance and fell!"

Jay covered his mouth, trying to stifle his snickering. "What scared you?"

Tim pointed up. Just through the hole in the roof, Jay could see a nutcracker standing on a shelf in the closet.

No amount of effort in the world was enough to stop Jay from laughing.

Tim gave Jay an incredulous look. "It's  _ not _ funny."

Jay opened his mouth, but couldn't form words. Tim's frown deepened, but instead of discouraging Jay from finding humor in the situation it just made him double over, almost in tears.     

Jay tried to stop and, with great effort between bursts of what could only be described as giggles, Jay stammered out an apology.

He very slowly made it through "I'm sorry, it's not funny, it's not funny, I'm glad you're okay, I'm just  _ relieved _ ," before he broke down and couldn't manage any more words.

Instead of getting offended, as Jay expected, Tim suddenly laughed, too, and at that point Jay was beyond help.

The sheer relief of being, in the strangest of circumstances, totally safe for once, made everything inexplicably hilarious.

After the most contagious of the laughter had passed, Tim managed a "Fine, yeah, it  _ did  _ happen to me," and no grudges were held.

••••••••••••••

The pair had returned to the lounge. The broken floorboards had found a home in the fireplace, set ablaze and crackling, slowly but surely battling the chill in the air.

Jay was back to fiddling with the tree. For a long time, neither he nor Tim spoke. It was a peaceful kind of silence, but one that Jay found he desperately wanted to fill. He was itching to speak; every memory he'd unearthed in the past few hours was very suddenly pressing down on his chest. But how to begin? 

The room was warm by the time Jay started talking.

"Y'know, I always wanted to have an older sibling."

Tim glanced up from the tedious task of digging a splinter out of his finger, an eyebrow raised and grin on his face. "Have you ever actually  _ heard _ stories from people who have older siblings?"

Jay scoffed. "Shut up, you're an only child, too."

"Well, I've heard stories from Brian. One time, his brothers thought it would be really funny to push him down the stairs and he broke his arm."

"Tim."

"Jay."

"You're ruining Christmas."

Tim laughed, and Jay rolled his eyes.

They went quiet for a bit. Jay left the tree and crossed to the fireplace, gently nudging a picture frame on the floor with his foot. He picked it up, shaking broken glass out of it, and wiped away some of the dust. A family of five stared up at him.

"When I was a kid—I don't really know the age, maybe five or six? I was with my grandmother, and I was telling her the story of Rudolph," Jay said, taking in each family member's face in turn.

" _ You _ were telling  _ her  _ the story?"

"Well, yeah—you know, when you're a kid, you think you're the only one who knows anything. Shut up, I'm trying to tell a story." Jay took a moment to collect his thoughts, staring at the youngest child in the photo. He carefully placed it on the mantle, then continued.

"So, I'm telling her this story about Rudolph, and she stopped me and she went, 'What is the purpose of reindeer?' And so, I'm like—I'm like five, maybe, I'm a kid, so I think really hard about it, and I've got this answer all planned out and I'm gonna explain how they fly the sleigh and deliver the presents and everything, but..." Jay glanced over his shoulder at Tim. "She just went, 'It waters all of the plants, Jay,' and just gave me the smuggest little grin."

"Oh, so  _ that's  _ where you get it, all your crappy puns." 

Jay smiled halfheartedly, turning back to the fireplace. "Yeah, I guess." He swiped his hand across the mantle and inspected his dirtied fingers with unnecessary interest. He rubbed off the grime on his hand.

"Y'know, she used to visit every Christmas—she'd travel down and stay the entire week, make the whole house happy. I guess it doesn't really make any sense, but I always thought that having my grandmother around was just like having an older sister. We played board games and she teased me just enough. She was fun." Jay exhaled slowly, as if that might shift the weight in his chest. "She died, but I don't really know when. Can't remember the funeral."

Jay went silent, thinking again. He could feel Tim's eyes on his back.

Another ornament on the floor caught his eye and he stooped down to pick it up. He hung it with the rest. It was uncomfortably quiet again.

Jay cleared his throat. "My mom got me a scooter one year. I crashed it in a ditch the next week and sprained my wrist. Still got some scars on my knees from it." He rubbed at the wrist in question absently, staring hard at the tree in front of him.

He realized he didn't know where the two-mice-sending-letters-to-Santa ornament had fallen and he got down on his knees, feeling around under the tree for it. He jabbed his hand twice on shards of a ball-shaped ornament before wrapping his fingers around the familiar shape of the mailbox in the mice ornament.

When he pulled it out, Jay could see that one of the mouse's heads had broken off. He hung it up anyways and stuck his now-bleeding finger in his mouth.

"It's weird," Jay mumbled finally, wiping his hand on his pant leg. "Christmas memories I can remember really vividly. Despite everything."

Jay shut his mouth. He wanted to ask Tim if it was the same for him. He wanted to hear that Tim had some grasp on his memories, too. He wanted to hear a shred of hope.

But he didn't know how to ask.

"You were that kid who vehemently refused to accept that Santa was fake, weren't you?" Tim asked it lightly, like he was trying to diffuse the heavy atmosphere, and it kind of worked.

Jay laughed. "My parents told me when I was ten and I cried. I convinced myself that my parents were wrong and I just had to be  _ good  _ enough and then Santa would come and explain his realness to my parents.

"For the weeks leading up to Christmas, I was an angel. My bedroom's window had access to the roof, so on Christmas Eve, I waited up there wrapped in a coat and a blanket, waiting for Santa to come. I got back in bed at five a.m., and I was like, 'He didn't come because I was only good in November and December.'

"So the next year, I tried even harder. It was  _ actually  _ obsessive, it was really bad. And of course, Santa didn't know up next December, either so I just, you know. Accepted it."

Jay's voice got a little quieter, and he carefully examined the cut on his finger.

"I guess I still kind of believe in Santa," he admitted. "I always hoped that maybe if I believed hard enough, Santa would actually be real. You know, actually give you anything you wanted for Christmas. Memories, or people from the past." Jay gingerly touched the place on his side where he had fallen earlier. "A safe place or— you know. Whatever you wanted."

Jay was suddenly acutely aware of how stupid he sounded and of how quiet Tim was. He swallowed thickly, cracking his knuckles. Tim was probably figuring out a way to destroy Jay with the most well-placed sarcastic punch ever. It's what Jay got for annoying him, after all—laughing at him after he fell through the freaking ceiling, making him listen to Jay ramble on like an idiot.

Jay cleared his throat again, desperately grasping for some way to cover. 

"What about you?" Jay asked, eyes trained on the two-mice-minus-one-head-sending-letters ornament. He hadn't looked at Tim since he had stopped speaking.

"What about me?" Tim said with what Jay easily identified as forced casualty. 

"Well—you and Christmas. I know you haven't really had anything to do with it since college, but... maybe before that?"

Tim was quiet for a moment. "They used to set up a Christmas tree in the lobby of the hospital. It was whatever." 

It seemed like he was going to say more, but he didn't, so Jay just commented that it sounded like it was nice.

Silence.

Tim added another bit of floorboard to the fire and heaved a sigh.

"My mom was never really that big on Christmas. Apparently my dad was wild for it, but when he died or disappeared or whatever, he took the, uh, Christmas spirit with him."

Jay turned, looking at Tim over his shoulder. "What happened to him?"

Tim grimaced, picking at the splinter in his hand again. "When I asked, my mom always acted like he left her, but now that I know all of that crap with my hallucinations might be what's after us now, it's possible that  _ that's  _ what took my dad." He shrugged. 

"We ignored the holiday for a long time, but then after I started going to public school—in high school, actually—my mom suddenly decided to try it one year. It wasn't anything super crazy, but it was nice. One of the best memories I have of my mom, actually. My entire junior year was like she was suddenly trying to make up for basically ignoring me my entire life. It was really weird at first, but she started going to all this trouble for me. It kinda meant a lot to me, after, like. All of that."

Jay didn't ask what 'all of that' included.

Tim chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Then she died in January. New Year’s Day, actually. Car accident. Got hit by a drunk driver. Happy Holidays to Tim, right?" He gave a wry smile, dropping his gaze to the fire and his hands in his lap. "Since then, you know. Pretty obvious."

Jay stared at Tim. He knew Tim had mentioned his mom wasn't ever really around, but he had no idea it was like  _ that _ .

If he didn't know what to say before, he definitely didn't now.

"I didn't know your mom died," Jay mumbled.

"It wasn't ever really relevant. I didn't see any reason to bring it up."

Jay said he was sorry.

Tim said it was fine.

••••••••••••••

With nothing left to say, the pair fell back into silence.

Tim watched the fire, turning the exchange back over in his head. It had been years since Tim had been so open with someone—had Brian been the last one? Aside from Jay, had Brian been the  _ only  _ one? At least Tim had only ever made two people incredibly uncomfortable by bringing up his dead mom for no reason.

Tim glanced over to Jay—he was back at the tree again, hanging up more broken ornaments. There was an awkward tension in the air, a special kind which only occurs when you bring up dead family.

So Tim decided to speak, kind of like Jay did. He knew he didn't have many stories, but he had some, and he figured that was enough.

"In the teen's ward, when I was a kid," Tim began, carefully tending to the fire, "there was this fifteen year old girl who was admitted for long-term care. She was overcoming anorexia and alcoholism. She visited my ward over and over during the December she was admitted, and she drew Christmas-y stuff for all of us." Tim paused, reaching hard through his head, trying to grasp the name of the girl to no avail. "I don't remember her name, but she always remembered mine. She had this tattoo of a snake on her arm that she couldn't remember getting, and even though she knew it was illegal and regretted it, she always fully admitted that it was really, really cool."

There was a crunching sound and Tim looked up to see Jay picking his way across the debris-filled room to sit down beside him.

Encouraged, Tim started up again.

"Uh, the Christmas I had with my mom—it was really hard, getting her a gift. I didn't know what she wanted, but I was really worried that if what I got her wasn't good enough, she would go back to ignoring me. Which  _ sounds _ really stupid, but, I mean, it was such a sudden switch from her neglecting me to caring that I couldn't help but wonder if the switch could just... flip back in the other direction." He could see Jay nodding solemnly out of the corner of his eye. "I don't really remember what I ended up getting her, but when she opened it, she told me that she loved it."

Tim leaned back against the wall, painfully aware of the short list of memories he had to tell. He wondered if it would be longer, had Christmas been more prominent in his life.

"My mom wasn't really that great at cooking, so the Christmas dinner wasn't exactly anything to write home about. It was also kind of weird, spending time with someone who had basically pretended I didn't exist since I was six or seven years old, but then my mom made this stupid joke about how the food was awful, and dinner was a lot less weird after that."

Tim pursed his lips, taking a moment. He wasn't really sure how he was feeling, but when he turned and made eye contact with Jay, his friend gave him an encouraging smile.

So Tim returned the smile as best he could and said, "That's all I got."

Jay tapped the butt of his flashlight against the floor. "Do you want me to tell another one?"

Tim rolled his eyes with feigned exasperation. "Oh, I don't know, Jay," he sighed. "You might just  _ ruin Christmas. _ "

"Shut up, Tim, or I'll ruin  _ your  _ Christmas."

"Too late," Tim whispered woefully. "You already have, with your  _ happy family memories  _ and  _ genuine good tidings. _ "

They laughed.

Jay began recounting the time his dad had fallen off the roof putting up lights, and they went from there.

It was good.

 


End file.
